Corporate Reserve

I always hear airline types complaining about how being a corporate pilot is not for them because corporate pilots are tied to a pager or cell phone. While that is partly true, it is extremely rare that I get a trip I did not know about for weeks before hand. Once or twice a month I will get a day where there is a chance I may have a trip. I call these days sitting on reserve, because I do have to be prepared to go when the phone rings.

July 1st just happened to be one of those days. I had dropped my bosses' family off at their house in Myrtle Beach (MYR) two days before hand. They were scheduled to be picked up on the 2nd, but my boss said there was a chance he and I would fly down the day before. It was all depended on his workload at the office. He would call me mid-day and tell me whether he was going or not. If he was not going I would fly down the following morning.

I woke up at 9:30am and drove down to Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast. I got home, changed into my swim suit and layed around the pool for a few hours while I waited for the phone to ring. It was neat to think today was a work day while I floated around the pool listening to Lil Wayne on this perfect day.


Just before noon my phone rang. My boss was ready to go. I had not eaten lunch yet, so I told him I would be ready to take off at three. I kept an eye on the time and wind using our recently installed clock and King Air wind tee


I jumped in the shower, grabbed lunch and drove down to my nieghbors house. He was going to ride up to EVY with me, where I would pick up my boss and he would pick up his Cessna T210R from the shop. We made the short trip to EVY landing right around 2pm. My boss was there a few minutes later and we were soon in the climb to 22,000 feet on our way south.

The winds were pretty strong for the summer, we were only seeing 200kts across the ground giving us a enroute time of two hours. Other then the fifty knot headwind, the weather was absolutley perfect. Before long we were flying the visual to runway 18 at MYR. Another twenty minutes later we were at the house and I was on the deck with a pizza and a drink enjoying my night. This job is great!